Back to Hard Determinism?
Galen Strawson
Galen Strawson (1952– ) teaches philosophy at the University of Reading (in England) and the City University of New York. He has done important and influential work on a variety of philosophical topics, especially the philosophy of mind, issues concerning causation, and the free will problem. (He is also the son of the perhaps even better known British philosopher P. F. Strawson.)
In the following selection, Strawson, in addition to offering a useful summary of the main positions on the free will problem, argues that moral responsibility (and freedom) in the most ultimate sense would require a kind of control over oneÕs own nature or character that it is impossible to have. His view is thus a version of what we have called hard determinism—one that is not committed to the thesis of causal determinism itself, but simply argues that whether or not causal determinism is true there is no logical room for freedom.
Free Will
ÔFree willÕ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. Its central questions are ÔWhat is it to act (or choose) freely?Õ, and ÔWhat is it to be morally responsible for oneÕs actions (or choices)?Õ These two questions are closely connected, for freedom of action is necessary for moral responsibility, even if it is not sufficient.
Philosophers give very different answers to these questions, hence also to two more specific questions about ourselves: (1) Are we free agents? and (2) Can we be morally responsible for what we do? Answers to (1) and (2) range from ÔYes, YesÕ to ÔNo, NoÕ—via ÔYes, NoÕ and various degrees of ÔPerhapsÕ, ÔPossiblyÕ, and ÔIn a senseÕ. (The fourth pair of outright answers, ÔNo, YesÕ, is rare, but appears to be accepted by some Protestants.)[1] Prominent among the ÔYes, YesÕ sayers are the compatibilists, who hold that free will is compatible with determinism. Briefly, determinism is the view that everything that happens is necessitated by what has already gone before, in such a way that nothing can happen otherwise than it does. According to compatibilists, freedom is compatible with determinism because freedom is essentially just a matter of not being constrained or hindered in certain ways when one acts or chooses. Thus normal adult human beings in normal circumstances are able to act and choose freely. No one is holding a gun to their heads. They are not drugged, or in chains, or subject to a psychological compulsion. They are therefore wholly free to choose and act even if their whole physical and psychological make-up is entirely determined by things for which they are in no way ultimately responsible—starting with their genetic inheritance and early upbringing.
Incompatibilists hold that freedom is not compatible with determinism. They point out that if determinism is true, then every one of oneÕs actions was determined to happen as it did before one was born. They hold that one cannot be held to be truly free and finally morally responsible for oneÕs actions in this case. They think compatibilism is a Ôwretched subterfuge.... a petty word-juggleryÕ, as Kant put it. It entirely fails to satisfy our natural convictions about the nature of moral responsibility.
The incompatibilists have a good point, and may be divided into two groups. Libertarians answer ÔYes, YesÕ to questions (1) and (2). They hold that we are indeed free and fully morally responsible agents, and that determinism must therefore be false. Their great difficulty is to explain why the falsity of determinism is any better than the truth of determinism when it comes to establishing our free agency and moral responsibility. For suppose that not every event is determined, and that some events occur randomly, or as a matter of chance. How can our claim to moral responsibility be improved by the supposition that it is partly a matter of chance or random outcome that we and our actions are as they are?[2]
The second group of incompatibilists is less sanguine. They answer ÔNo, NoÕ to questions (1) and (2). They agree with the libertarians that the truth of determinism rules out genuine moral responsibility, but argue that the falsity of determinism cannot help. Accordingly, they conclude that we are not genuinely free agents or genuinely morally responsible, whether determinism is true or false. One of their arguments can be summarized as follows. When one acts, one acts in the way one does because of the way one is. So to be truly morally responsible for oneÕs actions, one would have to be truly responsible for the way one is: one would have to be causa sui,</ITAL> or the cause of oneself, at least in certain crucial mental respects. But nothing can be causa sui</ITAL>—nothing can be the ultimate cause of itself in any respect. So nothing can be truly morally responsible.[3]
Suitably developed, this argument against moral responsibility seems very strong. But in many human beings, the experience of choice gives rise to a conviction of absolute responsibility that is untouched by philosophical arguments. This conviction is the deep and inexhaustible source of the free will problem; powerful arguments that seem to show that we cannot be morally responsible in the ultimate way that we suppose keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we continue to believe that we are ultimately morally responsible.[4]
1. Compatibilism
Do we have free will? It depends what you mean by the word ÔfreeÕ. More than two hundred senses of the word have been distinguished: the history of the discussion of free will is rich and remarkable. David Hume called the problem of free will Ôthe most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious scienceÕ.
According to compatibilists, we do have free will. They propound a sense of the word ÔfreeÕ according to which free will is compatible with determinism, even though determinism is the view that the history of the universe is fixed in such a way that nothing can happen otherwise than it does because everything that happens is necessitated by what has already gone before.
Suppose tomorrow is a national holiday. You are considering what to do. You can climb a mountain or read Lao Tse. You can mend your bicycle or go to the zoo. At this moment you are reading... philosophy. You are free to go on reading or stop now. You have started on this sentence, but you donÕt have to... finish it.
In this situation, as so often in life, you have a number of options. Nothing forces your hand. It seems natural to say that you are entirely free to choose what to do. And, given that nothing hinders you, it seems natural to say that you act entirely freely when you actually do (or try to do) what you have decided to do.
Compatibilists claim that this is the right thing to say. They believe that to have free will, to be a free agent, to be free in choice and action, is simply to be free from constraints of certain sorts. Freedom is a matter of not being physically or psychologically forced or compelled to do what one does. Your character, personality, preferences, and general motivational set may be entirely determined by events for which you are in no way responsible (by your genetic inheritance, upbringing, subsequent experience, and so on). But you do not have to be in control of any of these things in order to have compatibilist freedom. They do not constrain or compel you, because compatibilist freedom is just a matter of being able to choose and act in the way one prefers or thinks best given how one is. As its name declares, it is compatible with determinism. It is compatible with determinism even though it follows from determinism that every aspect of your character, and everything you will ever do, was already inevitable before you were born.
If determinism does not count as a constraint or compulsion, what does? Compatibilists standardly take it that freedom can be limited by such things as imprisonment, by a gun at oneÕs head, or a threat to the life of oneÕs children, or a psychological obsession and so on.
It is arguable, however, that compatibilist freedom is something one continues to possess undiminished so long as one can choose or act in any way at all. One continues to possess it in any situation in which one is not actually panicked, or literally compelled to do what one does, in such a way that it is not clear that one can still be said to choose or act at all (as when one presses a button, because oneÕs finger is actually forced down on the button).
Consider pilots of hijacked aeroplanes. They usually stay calm. They choose to comply with the hijackersÕ demands. They act responsibly, as we naturally say. They are able to do other than they do, but they choose not to. They do what they most want to do, all things considered, in the circumstances in which they find themselves.
All circumstances limit oneÕs options in some way. It is true that some circumstances limit oneÕs options much more drastically than others; but it does not follow that one is not free to choose in those circumstances. Only literal compulsion, panic, or uncontrollable impulse really removes oneÕs freedom to choose, and to (try to) do what one most wants to do given oneÕs character or personality. Even when oneÕs finger is being forced down on the button, one can still act freely in resisting the pressure, and in many other ways.[5]
Most of us are free to choose throughout our waking lives, according to the compatibilist conception of freedom. We are free to choose between the options that we perceive to be open to us. (Sometimes we would rather not face options, but are unable to avoid awareness of the fact that we do face them.) One has options even when one is in chains, or falling through space. Even if one is completely paralysed, one is still free in so far as one is free to choose to think about one thing rather than another. Sartre observed that there is a sense in which we are ÔcondemnedÕ to freedom, not free not to be free.
Of course one may well not be able to do everything one wants—one may want to fly unassisted, vapourize every gun in the United States by an act of thought, or house all those who sleep on the streets of Calcutta by the end of the month. But few have supposed that free will, or free agency, is a matter of being able to do everything one wants. That is one possible view of what it is to be free; but according to the compatibilists, free will is simply a matter of having genuine options and opportunities for action, and being able to choose between them according to what one wants or thinks best.
It may be said that dogs and other animals can be free agents, according to this basic account of compatibilism. Compatibilists may reply that dogs can indeed be free agents. And yet we do not think that dogs can be free or morally responsible in the way we can be. So compatibilists need to say what the relevant difference is between dogs and ourselves.
Many suppose that it is our capacity for self-conscious thought that makes the crucial difference, because it makes it possible for us to be explicitly aware of ourselves as facing choices and engaging in processes of reasoning about what to do. This is not because being self-conscious can somehow liberate one from the facts of determinism; if determinism is true, one is determined to have whatever self-conscious thoughts one has, whatever their complexity. Nevertheless, many are inclined to think that a creatureÕs explicit self-conscious awareness of itself as chooser and agent can constitute it as a free agent in a fundamental way that is unavailable to any unself-conscious agent.[6]
Compatibilists can agree with this. They can acknowledge and incorporate the view that self-conscious awareness of oneself as facing choices can give rise to a kind of freedom that is unavailable to unself-conscious agents. They may add that human beings are sharply marked off from dogs by their capacity to act for reasons that they explicitly take to be moral reasons. In general, compatibilism has many variants. According to Harry FrankfurtÕs version, for example, one has free will if one wants to be moved to action by the motives that do in fact move one to action. On this view, freedom is a matter of having a personality that is harmonious in a certain way. Freedom in this sense is clearly compatible with determinism.
Compatibilism has been refined in many ways, but this gives an idea of its basis. ÔWhat more could free agency possibly be?Õ, compatibilists like to ask. And this is a very powerful question.
2. Incompatibilism
Those who want to secure the conclusion that we are free agents do well to adopt a compatibilist theory of freedom, for determinism is unfalsifiable, and may be true.[7]... Many, however, think that the compatibilist account of things does not even touch the real problem of free will. They believe that all compatibilist theories of freedom are patently inadequate.
What is it, they say, to define freedom in such a way that it is compatible with determinism? It is to define it in such a way that a creature can be a free agent even if all its actions throughout its life are determined to happen as they do by events that have taken place before it is born; so that there is a clear sense in which it could not at any point in its life have done otherwise than it did. This, they say, is certainly not free will. More importantly, it is not a sufficient basis for true moral responsibility. One cannot possibly be truly or ultimately morally responsible for what one does if everything one does is ultimately a deterministic outcome of events that took place before one was born; or (more generally) a deterministic outcome of events for whose occurrence one is in no way ultimately responsible.
These anti-compatibilists or incompatibilists divide into two groups: the libertarians and the no-freedom theorists or pessimists about free will and moral responsibility.[8] The libertarians think that the compatibilist account of freedom can be improved on. They hold (1) that we do have free will, (2) that free will is not compatible with determinism, and (3) that determinism is therefore false. But they face an extremely difficult task: they have to show how indeterminism (the falsity of determinism) can help with free will and, in particular, with moral responsibility.
The pessimists or no-freedom theorists do not think that this can be shown. They agree with the libertarians that the compatibilist account of free will is inadequate, but they do not think it can be improved on. They agree that free will is not compatible with determinism, but deny that indeterminism can help to make us (or anyone else) free. They believe that free will, of the sort that is necessary for genuine moral responsibility, is probably impossible.
The pessimists about free will grant what everyone must: that there is a clear and important compatibilist sense in which we can be free agents (we can be free, when unconstrained, to choose and to do what we want or think best, given how we are). But they insist that this compatibilist sense of freedom is not enough: it does not give us what we want, in the way of free will; nor does it give us what we believe we have. And it is not as if the compatibilists have missed something. The truth is that nothing can give us what we (think we) want, or what we ordinarily think we have. All attempts to furnish a stronger notion of free will fail. We cannot be morally responsible, in the absolute, buck-stopping way in which we often unreflectively think we are. We cannot have ÔstrongÕ free will of the kind that we would need to have, in order to be morally responsible in this way.[9]
The fundamental motor of the free will debate is the worry about moral responsibility. If no one had this worry, it is doubtful whether the problem of free will would be a famous philosophical problem. The rest of this discussion will therefore be organized around the question of moral responsibility.
First, though, it is worth remarking that the worry about free will does not have to be expressed as a worry about the grounds of moral responsibility. A commitment to belief in free will may be integral to feelings that are extremely important to us independently of the issue of moral responsibility: feelings of gratitude, for example, and perhaps of love. OneÕs belief in strong free will may also be driven simply by the conviction that one is or can be radically self-determining in oneÕs actions (in a way that is incompatible with determinism) and this conviction need not involve giving much—or any—thought to the issue of moral responsibility. It seems that a creature could conceive of itself as radically self-determining without having any conception of moral right or wrong at all—and so without being any sort of moral agent.
3. Pessimism
One way of setting out the no-freedom theoristsÕ argument is as follows.
(1) When you act, you do what you do, in the situation in which you find yourself, because of the way you are.[10]
(2) To be truly or ultimately morally responsible for what you do, you must be truly or ultimately responsible for the way you are, at least in certain crucial mental respects. (Obviously you donÕt have to be responsible for the way you are in all respects. You donÕt have to be responsible for your height, age, sex, and so on. But it does seem that you have to be responsible for the way you are at least in certain mental respects. After all, it is your overall mental make-up that leads you to do what you do when you act.)
But
(3) You cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all, so you cannot be ultimately morally responsible for what you do.
Why is that you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are? Because
(4) To be ultimately responsible for the way you are you would have to have intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are, in a way that is impossible.
The impossibility is shown as follows. Suppose that
(5) You have somehow intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are, in certain mental respects: suppose that you have intentionally brought it about that you have a certain mental nature N, and that you have brought this about in such a way that you can now be said to be ultimately responsible for having nature N. (The limiting case of this would be the case in which you had simply endorsed your existing mental nature N from a position of power to change it.)[11]
For this to be true
(6) You must already have had a certain mental nature N–1, in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you now have nature N. (If you did not already have a certain mental nature, then you cannot have had any intentions or preferences, and even if you did change in some way, you cannot be held to be responsible for the way you now are.)[12]
But then
(7) For it to be true that you and you alone are truly responsible for how you now are, you must be truly responsible for having had the nature N–1 in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you now have nature N.
So
(8) You must have intentionally brought it about that you had that nature N–1. But in that case, you must have existed already with a prior nature. N–2, in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you had the nature N–1.
And so on. Here one is setting off on a potentially infinite regress. In order for one to be truly or ultimately responsible for how one is, in such a way that one can be truly morally responsible for what one does, something impossible has to be true: there has to be, and cannot be, a starting point in the series of acts of bringing it about that one has a certain nature—a starting point that constitutes an act of ultimate self-origination.[13]
There is a more concise way of putting the point: in order to be truly morally responsible for what one does, it seems that one would have to be the ultimate cause or origin of oneself, or at least of some crucial part of oneÕs mental nature. One would have to be causa sui, in the old terminology. But nothing can be truly or ultimately causa sui in any respect at all. Even if the property of being causa sui</ITAL> is allowed to belong (unintelligibly) to God, it cannot plausibly be supposed to be possessed by ordinary finite human beings....
In fact, nearly all of those who believe in strong free will do so without any conscious thought that it requires ultimate self-origination. Nevertheless, this is the only thing that could actually ground the kind of strong free will that is regularly believed in, and it does seem that one way in which the belief in strong free will manifests itself is in the very vague and (necessarily) unexamined belief that many have that they are somehow or other radically responsible for their general mental nature, or at least for certain crucial aspects of it.
The pessimistsÕ argument may seem contrived, but essentially the same argument can be given in a more natural form as follows. (i) It is undeniable that one is the way one is, initially, as a result of heredity and early experience. (ii) It is undeniable that these are things for which one cannot be held to be in any way responsible (this might not be true if there were reincarnation, but reincarnation would just shift the problem backwards). (iii) One cannot at any later stage of oneÕs life hope to accede to true or ultimate responsibility for the way one is by trying to change the way one already is as a result of oneÕs heredity and previous experience. For one may well try to change oneself, but (iv) both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of success in oneÕs attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and previous experience. And (v) any further changes that one can bring about only after one has brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by heredity and previous experience. (vi) This may not be the whole story, for it may be that some changes in the way one is are traceable to the influence of indeterministic or random factors. But (vii) it is foolish to suppose that indeterministic or random factors, for which one is ex hypothesi in no way responsible, can in themselves contribute to oneÕs being truly or ultimately responsible for how one is.[14]
The claim, then, is not that people cannot change the way they are. They can, in certain respects (which tend to be exaggerated by North Americans and underestimated, perhaps, by members of many other cultures). The claim is only that people cannot be supposed to change themselves in such a way as to be or become truly or ultimately responsible for the way they are, and hence for their actions. One can put the point by saying that the way you are is, ultimately, in every last detail, a matter of luck—good or bad.
4. Moral Responsibility
Two main questions are raised by the pessimistsÕ arguments. First, is it really true that one needs to be self-creating or causa sui in some way, in order to be truly or ultimately responsible for what one does, as step (2) of the pessimistsÕ argument asserts? Addressing this question will be delayed until y6, because a more basic question arises: What notion of responsibility is being appealed to in this argument? What exactly is this ÔultimateÕ responsibility that we are held to believe in...? And if we do believe in it, what makes us believe in it?
One dramatic way to characterize the notion of ultimate responsibility is by reference to the story of heaven and hell: ÔultimateÕ moral responsibility is responsibility of such a kind that, if we have it, it makes sense to propose that it could be just to punish some of us with torment in hell and reward others with bliss in heaven. It makes sense because what we do is absolutely up to us. The words Ômakes senseÕ are stressed because one certainly does not have to believe in the story of heaven and hell in order to understand the notion of ultimate responsibility that it is used to illustrate. Nor does one have to believe in the story of heaven and hell in order to believe in ultimate responsibility (many atheists have believed in it). One does not have to have heard of it.[15]
The story is useful because it illustrates the kind of absolute or ultimate responsibility that many have supposed—and do suppose—themselves to have. It becomes particularly vivid when one is specifically concerned with moral responsibility, and with questions of desert: but it serves equally well to illustrate the sense of radical freedom and responsibility that may be had by a self-conscious agent that has no concept of morality. And one does not have to refer to the story of heaven and hell in order to describe the sorts of everyday situation that seem to be primarily influential in giving rise to our belief in ultimate responsibility. Suppose you set off for a shop on the eve of a national holiday, intending to buy a cake with your last ten pound note. Everything is closing down. There is one cake left: it costs ten pounds. On the steps of the shop someone is shaking an Oxfam tin.[16] You stop, and it seems completely clear to you that it is entirely up to you what you do next. That is, it seems clear to you that you are truly, radically free to choose, in such a way that you will be ultimately responsible for whatever you do choose. You can put the money in the tin, or go in and buy the cake, or just walk away. (You are not only completely free to choose. You are not free not to choose.)
Standing there, you may believe that determinism is true. You may believe that in five minutesÕ time you will be able to look back on the situation and say, of what you will by then have done, ÔIt was determined that I should do thatÕ. But even if you do believe this, it does not seem to undermine your current sense of the absoluteness of your freedom, and of your moral responsibility for your choice.
One diagnosis of this phenomenon is that one cannot really believe that determinism is true, in such situations of choice, and cannot help thinking that the falsity of determinism might make freedom possible. But the feeling of ultimate responsibility seems to remain inescapable even if one does not think this, and even if one has been convinced by the entirely general argument against ultimate responsibility given in section 3. Suppose one accepts that no one can be in any way causa sui,</ITAL> and yet that one would have to be causa sui</ITAL> (in certain crucial mental respects) in order to be ultimately responsible for oneÕs actions. This does not seem to have any impact on oneÕs sense of oneÕs radical freedom and responsibility, as one stands there, wondering what to do. OneÕs radical responsibility seems to stem simply from the fact that one is fully conscious of oneÕs situation, and knows that one can choose, and believes that one action is morally better than the other. This seems to be immediately enough to confer full and ultimate responsibility. And yet it cannot really do so, according to the pessimists. For whatever one actually does, one will do what one does because of the way one is, and the way one is is something for which one neither is nor can be responsible, however self-consciously aware of oneÕs situation one is.
The example of the cake may be artificial, but similar situations of choice occur regularly in human life. They are the experiential rock on which the belief in ultimate responsibility is founded. The belief often takes the form of belief in specifically moral, desert-implying responsibility. But, as noted, an agent could have a sense of ultimate responsibility without possessing any conception of moralityÉ.
5. Metaphysics and Moral Psychology
We now have the main elements of the problem of free will. It is natural to start with the compatibilist position; but this has only to be stated to trigger the objection that compatibilism cannot possibly satisfy our intuitions about moral responsibility. According to this objection, an incompatibilist notion of free will is essential in order to make sense of the idea that we are genuinely morally responsible. But this view, too, has only to be stated to trigger the pessimistsÕ objection that indeterministic occurrences cannot possibly contribute to moral responsibility: one can hardly be supposed to be more truly morally responsible for oneÕs choices and actions or character if indeterministic occurrences have played a part in their causation than if they have not played such a part. Indeterminism gives rise to unpredictability, not responsibility. It cannot help in any way at all.</P>
The pessimists therefore conclude that strong free will is not possible, and that ultimate responsibility is not possible either. So no punishment or reward is ever truly just or fair, when it comes to moral matters.
...
Now the argument may cycle back to compatibilism. Pointing out that ÔultimateÕ moral responsibility is obviously impossible, compatibilists may claim that we should rest content with the compatibilist account of things—since it is the best we can do. But this claim reactivates the incompatibilist objection, and the cycle continues.
There is an alternative strategy at this point; quit the traditional metaphysical circle for the domain of moral psychology. The principal positions in the traditional metaphysical debate are clear. No radically new option is likely to emerge after millennia of debate. The interesting questions that remain are primarily psychological: Why do we believe we have strong free will and ultimate responsibility?... What is it like to live with this belief? What are its varieties? How might we be changed by dwelling intensely on the view that ultimate responsibility is impossible?
A full answer to these questions is beyond the scope of this [article] but one fundamental cause of our belief in ultimate responsibility has been mentioned. It lies in the experience of choice that we have as self-conscious agents who are able to be fully conscious of what they are doing when they deliberate about what to do and make choices. (We choose between the Oxfam box and the cake; or we make a difficult, morally neutral choice about which of two paintings to buy.) This raises an interesting question: Is it true that any possible self-conscious creature that faces choices and is fully aware of the fact that it does so must experience itself as having strong free will, or as being radically self-determining, simply in virtue of the fact that it is a self-conscious agent (and whether or not it has a conception of moral responsibility)? It seems that we cannot live or experience our choices as determined, even if determinism is true. But perhaps this is a human peculiarity, not an inescapable feature of any possible self-conscious agent. And perhaps it is not even universal among human beings.[17]
...
6. Challenges to Pessimism
The preceding discussion attempts to illustrate the internal dynamic of the free will debate, and to explain why the debate is likely to continue for as long as human beings can think. The basic point is this: powerful logical or metaphysical reasons for supposing that we cannot have strong free will keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we cannot help believing that we do have it. The pessimistsÕ or no-freedom theoristsÕ conclusions may seem irresistible during philosophical discussion, but they are likely to lose their force, and seem obviously irrelevant to life, when one stops philosophizing.
Various challenges to the pessimistsÕ argument have been proposed, some of which appear to be supported by the experience or ÔphenomenologyÕ of choice. One challenge grants that one cannot be ultimately responsible for oneÕs mental nature—oneÕs character, personality, or motivational structure—but denies that it follows that one cannot be truly morally responsible for what one does (it therefore challenges step (2) of the argument set out in section 3).
This challenge has at least two versions. One has already been noted: we are attracted by the idea that our capacity for fully explicit self-conscious deliberation, in a situation of choice, suffices by itself to constitute us as truly morally responsible agents in the strongest possible sense. The idea is that such full self-conscious awareness somehow renders irrelevant the fact that one neither is nor can be ultimately responsible for any aspect of oneÕs mental nature. On this view, the mere fact of oneÕs self-conscious presence in the situation of choice can confer true moral responsibility; it may be undeniable that one is, in the final analysis, wholly constituted as the sort of person one is by factors for which one cannot be in any way ultimately responsible; but the threat that this fact appears to pose to oneÕs claim to true moral responsibility is simply obliterated by oneÕs self-conscious awareness of oneÕs situation.[18]
The pessimists reply: This may correctly describe a strong source of belief in ultimate (moral) responsibility, but it is not an account of something that could constitute ultimate (moral) responsibility. When one acts after explicit self-conscious deliberation, one acts for certain reasons. But which reasons finally weigh with one is a matter of oneÕs mental nature, which is something for which one cannot be in any way ultimately responsible.[19] One can certainly be a morally responsible agent in the sense of being aware of distinctively moral considerations when one acts. But one cannot be morally responsible in such a way that one is ultimately deserving of punishment or reward for what one does.
The conviction that fully explicit self-conscious awareness of oneÕs situation can be a sufficient foundation of strong free will is extremely powerful. The no-freedom theoristsÕ argument seems to show that it is wrong, but it is a conviction that runs deeper than rational argument, and it survives untouched, in the everyday conduct of life, even after the validity of the no-freedom theoristsÕ argument has been admitted.[20]
Another version of the challenge runs as follows. The reason why one can be truly or ultimately (morally) responsible for what one does is that oneÕs self—what one might call the Ôagent selfÕ—is, in some crucial sense, independent of oneÕs general mental nature (oneÕs character, personality, motivational structure, and so on). OneÕs mental nature <ITAL>inclines one to do one thing rather than another, but it does not thereby necessitate one to do one thing rather than the other.... As an agent-self, one incorporates a power of free decision that is independent of all the particularities of oneÕs mental nature in such a way that one can, after all, count as truly and ultimately morally responsible in oneÕs decisions and actions even though one is not ultimately responsible for any aspect of oneÕs mental nature.[21]
The pessimists reply: Even if one grants the validity of this conception of the agent-self for the sake of argument, it cannot help to establish ultimate moral responsibility. According to the conception, the agent-self decides in the light of the agentÕs mental nature but is not determined by the agentÕs mental nature. The following question immediately arises: Why does the agent-self decide as it does? The general answer is clear. Whatever the agent-self decides, it decides as it does because of the overall way it is; and this necessary truth returns us to where we started. For once again, it seems that the agent-self must be responsible for being the way it is, in order to be a source of true or ultimate responsibility. But this is impossible, for the reasons given in section 3; nothing can be causa sui in the required way. Whatever the nature of the agent-self, it is ultimately a matter of luck (or, for those who believe in God, a matter of grace). It may be proposed that the agent-self decides as it does partly or wholly because of the presence of indeterministic occurrences in the decision process. But it is clear that indeterministic occurrences can never be a source of true (moral) responsibility.[22]
Some believe that free will and moral responsibility are above all a matter of being governed in oneÕs choices and actions by reason—or by Reason with a capital ÔRÕ. But possession of the property of being governed by Reason cannot be a ground of radical moral responsibility as ordinarily understood. It cannot be a property that makes punishment (for example) ultimately just or fair for those who possess it, and unfair for those who do not possess it. [23] Why not? Because to be morally responsible, on this view, is simply to possess one sort of motivational set among others. It is to value or respond naturally to rational considerations—which are often thought to include moral considerations by those who propound this view. It is to have a general motivational set that may be attractive, and that may be more socially beneficial than many others. But there is no escape from the fact that someone who does possess such a motivational set is simply lucky to possess it—if it is indeed a good thing—while someone who lacks it is unlucky.
This may be denied. It may be said that some people struggle to become more morally responsible, and make an enormous effort. Their moral responsibility is then not a matter of luck; it is their own hard-won achievement.
The pessimistsÕ reply is immediate. Suppose you are someone who struggles to be morally responsible, and make an enormous effort. Well, that, too, is a matter of luck. You are lucky to be someone who has a character of a sort that disposes you to make that sort of effort. Someone who lacks a character of that sort is merely unlucky....
In the end, luck swallows everything. This is one way of putting the point that there can be no ultimate responsibility, given the natural, strong conception of responsibility that was characterized at the beginning of section 4. Relative to that conception, no punishment or reward is ever ultimately just or fair, however natural or useful or otherwise humanly appropriate it may be or seem.
The facts are clear, and they have been known for a long time. When it comes to the metaphysics of free will. AndrŽ GideÕs remark is apt: ÔEverything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.Õ It seems that the only freedom that we can have is compatibilist freedom. If—since—that is not enough for ultimate responsibility, we cannot have ultimate responsibility. The only alternative to this conclusion is to appeal to God and mystery—this in order to back up the claim that something that appears to be provably impossible is not only possible but actual.
The debate continues; some have thought that philosophy ought to move on. There is little reason to expect that it will do so, as each new generation arises bearing philosophers gripped by the conviction that they can have ultimate responsibility. Would it be a good thing if philosophy did move on, or if we became more clear-headed about the topic of free will than we are? It is hard to say.
From Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward Craig (New York: Routledge, Ltd., 1998).
Discussion Questions
1. Think carefully through the two related arguments for hard determinism that Strawson gives on pages xxx-xxx. How would a compatibilist of the Hume-Stace variety reply? How would Frankfurt reply? How would Campbell, Nozick, and Kane reply (donÕt assume that their replies would be the same)? Which view do you find most plausible, and why?
2. Strawson says in several places that an agent causation view is impossible. Does he have any clear argument for this claim—over and above the challenge (already seen earlier) to explain how free choices of the sort they attempt to describe can fail to be determined by the antecedent nature of the self without being random?</P></ITEM>
3. How intuitively implausible is the rejection of Òstrong free willÓ and Òultimate responsibilityÓ? Imagine yourself in the process of making a very difficult moral decision. Can you bring yourself to believe that whatever you eventually do is entirely determined by conditions that existed before you were born or that it is even partly a random event? How would you approach such a choice if you believed either of these things?
[1] You should be able to figure out roughly what views these answers reflect. The ÒYes, NoÓ answer might be given by someone who accepts the compatibilist account of freedom as the only intelligible one, but thinks that it is still inadequate for genuine moral responsibility. The Protestant view in question is the idea that everything a person does is predestined by God, but that people are still responsible at least in the sense that they can be appropriately rewarded or punished.
[2] Thus the libertarian, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, must seemingly find a third alternative to determinism and randomness—a version of indeterminism that is somehow not mere randomness.
[3] This is essentially the view of Blatchford and, even more clearly, of Edwards—and also in the end of Strawson himself.
[4] As we have seen, this psychological conviction, especially as it arises in situations of actual choice, is among the most basic reasons for believing in free will.
[5] Strawson is saying here that the central compatibilist view that we found in Hume and Stace (that a free action is one that results from oneÕs own will or psychological processes) does not really justify excluding cases of constraint or compulsion from the class of free actions. (This was acknowledged to some extent by Stace when he described such cases as Òborderline casesÓ: they involve some degree of freedom in that one still has options, even though very limited ones.)
[6] This seems to be FrankfurtÕs view.
[7] Strawson means here that the failure to find causes doesnÕt establish that there arenÕt any, so that determinism could never be conclusively refuted. Even in the case of quantum theory, some still think that underlying deterministic causes (so-called Òhidden variablesÓ) will eventually be found.
[8] ÒNo-freedom theoristsÓ or Òpessimists about free willÓ are hard determinists, as that term has been used here.
[9] This Òabsolute, buckstoppingÓ kind of freedom is the one that yields what Kane describes as Òultimate responsibility.Ó It is also the kind of freedom being advocated by Campbell and Nozick: one in which a person is responsible for free choices, but without those choices depending on its formed character or nature (which would make them instead dependent on heredity and environment). The ÒpessimistsÓ deny that this sort of freedom is possible.
[10] Think very carefully about the content of this premise. It is not supposed to assert that causal determinism is true. Nor is it supposed to rule out external influences or randomness—it merely asserts that anything you do (as opposed to something that merely happens to you) derive in some way from your nature and not from external influences or randomness.
[11] Notice that this would be possible even under FrankfurtÕs view.
[12] Step (6) is the crucial step in the argument. It claims that a choice of oneÕs own nature (perhaps via a choice to overcome oneÕs strongest desire and do the right thing, as discussed by Campbell; or the adoption of a principle for assigning weights to reasons, as discussed by Nozick; or via a Òself-forming action,Ó as discussed by Kane) must be based on intentions or preferences that derive from oneÕs previous nature. The implicit idea is that otherwise it would be merely random and so not anything for which the person would be responsible.
[13] Since an infinite regress of natures is impossible, there must be a starting point in which one constitutes oneÕs own nature for the first time, on the basis of no previous nature. Strawson claims that this is impossible. In the following paragraph, this claim is elaborated by appeal to the allegedly impossible idea of causing oneself.
[14] Here is a simpler version of the argument, one that Blatchford and Edwards would endorse. Nozick (and presumably Campbell) would reject step (iv), claiming that one can sometimes change oneÕs self in ways not determined by oneÕs previously formed character. (Frankfurt is not explicitly committed to the acceptance of step (iv), but it is compatible with his view.) KaneÕs view is less clear: would he reject step (iv) or step (vii)?
[15] The last point here is worth underlining: Strawson is using the idea of heaven and hell to illustrate what Òultimate moral responsibilityÓ is supposed to be like. But he is not saying that the existence of heaven and hell—or God—is required for ultimate moral responsibility to exist or for the idea of it to be intelligible.
[16] Oxfam is an international charitable and emergency relief organization.
[17] What would it be like to have the opposite experience: to experience oneÕs choices as determined? Do people ever have such an experience?
[18] This is FrankfurtÕs view.
[19] This is essentially the reply that Blatchford and Edwards would give to Frankfurt.
[20] Is this conviction as really strong as Strawson claims? Is there any clear rationale for why Òfully explicit self-conscious awarenessÓ is enough for Òstrong free willÓ (and ultimate responsibility)? Note that Frankfurt himself does not seem to make such a claim.
[21] This is CampbellÕs view, and presumably also NozickÕs (for where else would the assigning of weights to reasons come from?). StrawsonÕs reply is given in the following paragraph.
[22] The underlying idea here is that any aspect of an action that does not derive in some way from the Òagent-selfÓ being the way that it is must be merely random (since it is not controlled by anything about the agent). This is also what Strawson would say about KaneÕs view.
[23] This would be a version of compatibilism, but importantly different from the ones discussed so far, in the emphasis on reason. StrawsonÕs response is essentially the same one that he gives to other versions of compatibilism.